Does anyone really miss Azmi Bishara?

To judge by the quantity of verbiage spilled over the years by politicians and journalists on both the right and the left to describe the threat posed by Azmi Bishara, Israel should be a better, safer place today, a year after his departure for Jordan with no intention of returning.

But nothing has changed. The Arabs in Israel do not feel less Palestinian or more Israeli because Bishara is no longer addressing the Knesset, publishing opinion pieces or appearing at rallies.

Bishara, who seemed to be a significant figure in Israeli - not only Arab-Israeli - public life, faded away, and he is definitely not missed.

That's not true for everyone, of course. Last week the party he founded, Balad (the National Democratic Alliance), marking the one-year anniversary of the "conspiracy" that forced Bishara into exile. Estimates vary but at most a few hundred people came to Majd al-Krum for the gathering. The departure of a political leader like Bishara, which many expected would be a watershed moment for Arabs in Israel, instead occasioned a memorial day marked by his small band of loyal followers. This may not have been what Bishara imagined when he decided not to return to Israel due to his investigation on suspicions of spying and money laundering.

He did not become a star in the wider Arab world, either. When he decided to remain in Jordan, many said Bishara felt the role of the leader of Israel's Arabs - "the 1948 Arabs," as Balad's Internet site is called - or even of Palestinian leader, was too small for him. He saw himself as a pan-Arab leader, along the lines of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser.

The Arab media, and mainly Al Jazeera, interviewed him non-stop in the first few months, but lately that frequency has declined. One Al Jazeera commentator even attacked Bishara personally.

"The paradox is that the Arab world was interested in Azmi precisely because he was an Arab-Israeli leader, because he was a Knesset member," says one Arab-Israeli academic. "Now that he is no longer a member of the Israeli parliament, he is less interesting."

Trauma of 1948

During the Second Lebanon War, many Arabs in Israel's north remained in their homes, under Hezbollah missile fire, even though they had no bomb shelters. The trauma of 1948 taught them that they must not leave their homes for even a moment.

"I stayed in Haifa," was the epitaph requested by the late Arab writer Emil Habibi. Another obvious figure of comparison is Sheikh Raad Salah, leader of the Islamic movement's northern branch, who chose to stay and stand trial for security offenses. He served a three-year prison term, and his public image only improved. Bishara preferred to leave, perhaps because he felt his poor health would not withstand long years in prison. This decision led many people to question his level of personal commitment.

There is no disputing that Bishara changed the discourse among Israel's Arabs. He established the concept of "a state of all its citizens" and brought a sense of modernity to Arab-Israeli politics, which had previously moved between the extremes of traditional clannishness on one end and the revolutionary fervor of Emile Habibi and Tawfiq Zayyad on the other. Since then, however, the idea of Israel as a state of all its citizens has become mainstream, and Bishara, says the academic, stopped dealing with the civic aspect of political thought and focused almost exclusively on its national aspect.

Some say that Israeli Arab society simply grew up. Today's young Arabs are perhaps less interested in politics, but they feel a lot more secure in their Palestinian identity. They are also more educated and can form their own ideas, without the backing of a theoretician like Bishara.

Even many people who disagree with this analysis agree that Bishara is not missing from the Israeli Arab internal discourse. His handsome packaging may be missing, but not the content. Balad members of course see things differently, but even they cannot dispute that Israeli Arab society did not go into crisis due to Bishara's absence.

Still, everyone, even his sworn opponents, agrees that Bishara's presence is missing in the contacts between Israeli and Arab societies, particularly in the media. Aided by the democratic concept of a state of all its citizens, Bishara knew how to challenge the "Jewish state" discourse. He was once a fixture in every television panel of talking heads.

Today MK Ahmed Tibi fulfills the role of representing public Arab positions with fluent sagacity on the one hand and provocativeness, on the other. Tibi may be even more skilled with the media than Bishara, but cannot arouse emotions the way Bishara could. The Avigdor Liebermans and Effi Eitams had much more fun hating Bishara than they do Tibi. Perhaps they miss him.

	Former Balad MK Azmi Bishara. (Motti Kimche)